


Ahoy, Lala

by maracolleenbanks



Category: Dreamwalkers Universe
Genre: Dragons, Gen, Pandemonium (Dreamwalkers), Surfing, The Garden (Dreamwalkers)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 10:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15459150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maracolleenbanks/pseuds/maracolleenbanks





	Ahoy, Lala

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dreamwalkers Universe](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/404358) by Siren Tycho and Mara Colleen Banks. 



Autumn was coming. Dunn could smell it on the wind. It smelled like cinnamon and Tam smoke and gray days and rain. In other parts of the Garden, where summers were warm and winters were cold, those same smells would bring a rush of Lilim to the beaches anxious to catch the last waves before the water became unbearably cold, but it was always a little cold on the end of the Cape where Dunn lived, and Dunn was used to it. He’d practically been born in the water and wore a wet suit all year round. 

It was a gray day, too depressing for swimming to most Lilim. The tide was out when he crested the dune and caught the first glimpse of the black water. He’d been kept longer at Josie’s house than he intended, and he was slightly irritated to find that the tide was out. The beach covered with seaweed, and he had a long walk to the breakers, but there was no reason to turn around, no reason not to go out there. The waves would be smaller, but they were never too small to catch a good swell on the end of the Cape. 

He paused there on the top of the hill for a moment and scanned the water for something blue. It was a tradition in his family to begin every trip to the beach by looking for Lala, the water dragon legend said swam off the end of the Cape. Dunn had never seen her. No one he knew had seen her. Not even Bootes the Liar had any tall tales of Lala to tell, but tradition was tradition, and he raised his arms and yelled, “Ahoy, Lala!” and ran down the hill. 

He dropped his surfboard on the beach, stripped down to his water shoes, and pulled on his wet suit. For a moment, he considered taking the board just because he’d dragged it all the way to the beach, but he decided that it would be more satisfying to body board at low tide. Body boarding off the end of the cape was a dicy idea in the best of times. Riptides and undertow threatened to pull even the most experienced swimmers under and drag them around the cape to the open ocean, but with the tide out so far and the waves were so small, he could see no reason why he couldn’t catch a swell, dive for the shore, and allow the white water to carry him all the way in. He would be working with the current that way. If he got sucked down, it would only be a matter of minutes before the wave spit him out on the beach.

Despite his wet suit the water made his legs tingle. His animal instincts told him to linger close to shore and warm up slowly, but he knew that he could only wade so far out before he was in the dangerous middle place where the waves broke and the water’s power was strongest, before the hill-like swells that merely pushed a body up and down and didn’t pull you out or send you tumbling back.

A wave, larger than he expected, broke early, and he dove into it. He was too late to dive through cleanly and come out the other side, and he felt the white water bubble around him, fighting his forward momentum, holding him there in the place the waves broke.

Waves come in threes, and he had no idea what place in the cycle this wave was in, but he had no time for strategy. He had to breathe. As soon as the last wave was gone, he kicked off the bottom and rushed for the surface. There was only enough time to take a gulp of air before another wave tugged at his legs, trying to drag him feet-first out to sea. He dove again, hoping he could beat the next wave, but again the wave broke before he could swim through it. When he reached the surface again, he found himself still in that dangerous middle place, too far out to easily swim back to shore, not far enough yet for hope of reaching the swells. 

He ducked to avoid a third wave, too late to dive, and came up sputtering. This wave was bigger than the other two, and he was convinced for a moment the cycle was over, and the ocean would give him a chance to rest. Instead, a fourth wave came, bigger than the last. He had enough time to see the towering swell approaching before it broke, but the undertow was already sucking him back into it, and he knew he was too late to avoid getting tumbled. All he could do was stare and breathe and brace himself and dread.

Just then, a jet of water flew up over the top of the swell. He wasn’t out far enough for whales, was he? No, it was impossible. He knew the beach’s deepening as well as he knew the rhythm of the tides. It just wasn’t possible for a whale to come that close to shore. There were no rocks this way, either, tall enough to break a wave like that, so he half-convinced himself he was just seeing things when a second jet crested over the wave, just as it broke and pulled his legs out from under him. 

As soon as Dunn was old enough to go out beyond his knees, he knew the dangers of undertow and riptides. He always prided himself on working around the currents, diving over and under the fiercest waves, and never allowing the water to pull him where he didn’t want to go. Now his worst fears were being realized. He was being sucked into the water’s fiercest roiling. If he couldn’t get control again, he might be held under and drowned or sucked out to sea.

He knew fighting the current directly was no use, so he tried to fight sideways, pushing for the surface instead of directly opposing the current that wanted to pull him out. It was a conservative move, but he was running out of air. If he was sent out further than he wanted to be, at least then he might be beyond the breakers and could take the time to tread water and breathe. 

The oncoming wave pulled the sand out from under his feet, but after several tries he found ground solid enough to push off of and shot up and up through the wave. He crowed inwardly, confident that he’d bested the water.

Just as he thought he was about to break through to the surface, his head found something hard. The force of the impact sent a shock of pain down his spine, stunned him, and pushed him back down again. 

The undertow grabbed hold of him again and pulled at his feet once more, and he went down, lungs burning, trying hard not to inhale water. 

He saw stars, pinched his nose and held his mouth closed. He could survive for a few minutes without oxygen, but if his lungs started taking in water he wouldn’t be able to breathe even if he managed to break the surface. He knew this well enough, but his body didn’t. Panic seized him. The reflex to breathe overwhelmed him. 

Then there was a tug on the collar of his wetsuit, and he felt himself rising for the surface. Something sharp like a great claw scratched the skin on the back of his neck, but he was too far gone to feel anything but relief to be going upward again, up to the gentle air, up to breathe.

He reached the surface and gasped for air, but then he kept rising until he hovered several feet over the waves. He was held there, coughing and panting and rubbing the water out of his eyes, relieved to be out of the water and too weak to fight whatever held him there. When he was able to see again, he opened his eyes on a the face of a grinning blue dragon.

The dragon’s teeth were sharp as any shark’s, but Dunn had grown up on the beach, and he knew the tales of the blue water dragon named Lala. She was a kind dragon in al the stories, who looked out for reckless swimmers, so he didn’t think about those teeth at all. 

Instead, he gaped, speechless at a her grinning face. Despite her teeth and the sharp spines that went over her head and down her back, she looked almost dopey. 

He allowed himself to be pulled onto her belly for a giant dragon-sized hug. She cooed softly, obviously pleased with herself for pulling him out of the water, and Dunn tried not to groan as she nearly crushed his ribs with her exuberance.

Fortunately, the hug didn’t last for long before she spun skillfully under him, so he was on her back rather than her stomach. He held on tight as wings that looked far to small for the task beat the wind, pulling her up as she ran over the water like an albatross until they caught the sea breeze and rose up over the pounding waves.

It was obvious that she wasn’t a strong flier. They wobbled and tilted and were overtaken by the wind currents’ every movement, but she was confident enough to look over her shoulder at him as they hovered there on the breeze that blew ever out to sea and smiled at the awe on his face as he took in the Garden. Dunn considered water his element, but he was stunned into silence by the beauty of the land. The great gray cliffs on the mainland towered over the beaches on either side of the Cape, and the narrow strip of land that made up the cape that snaked between them faded from beach sand brown to deep green, yellowing at the edges to the north where autumn was much further advanced. 

While he watched, she began to hum, a children’s song he himself had sung about a frothy white wave who summersaulted into the shore and rolled back out again. 

They hovered over the beach for some time, turning circles in the thermals like a giant bird of prey, but it was a cold, gray day, too depressing for swimming for most Lilim, and there was no one there to see him triumphant, riding the back of Lala the legendary dragon. 

Eventually, she tired and left him on the beach with a booming dragon laugh, pausing just long enough to hear his thanks and give him another crushing hug. Then she flew back to the sea. 

He stood there dripping, watching as she disappeared somewhere over the swells. 

That was the last time he saw her, but in all his days, never once did he fail to yell, “Ahoy, Lala!” when he crested the top of the dune overlooking her cape.


End file.
